Beekeeping on the island of Newfoundland.

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Bees Doing Bee Things (Video)

Our active spring bees haven’t had much of a chance to get active in the past week or so. Freezing rain and fun stuff like that. But they managed to get out today. Nothing big. What I’d call moderate activity. It’s all coming back to me now like a YouTube video in my brain:

TECHNICAL NOTES: The slow-mo comes out blurry when viewed in standard definition like this. It looks much better on my PC at home. I still haven’t been able to work out a simple HD upload that doesn’t take an hour or more to upload the file. I’ll see what I can do. I’m experimenting with these shots. Jenny and I may eventually shoot a documentary about beekeeping in Newfoundland. Many of the brief videos posted to Mud Songs are rough camera tests.

Anyway, we plan to inspect our hives tomorrow or the next day — if the freezing rain doesn’t come back. A hive inspection is a major operation, one that requires our full attention. I may set up a video camera on a tripod and we’ll see what it captures, but getting through the inspection without damaging the hive or injuring the queen is our highest priority, not blogging about it (sorry).
In other news, I attempted to fix the leaky hive top feeders today by sealing up the cracks with melted beeswax. I melted the wax on our outdoor grill (our BBQ):

Beeswax fumes are highly combustible. I’d be looking for trouble if I did this indoors with our gas oven. (Highly combustible fumes + an open flame + indoors = not a good idea.) With a ruined paintbrush, I painted over all the cracks like this:

And this:

And this too:

I poured the melted wax directly over some of the cracks that I couldn’t reach with the brush and tipped the feeders so the liquid wax ran down the cracks. I also waxed over any cracks on the bottom of the feeders. We’ll test them out in a week or two after the cold weather is hopefully over and done with.